Istat, the Italian National Institute of Statistics is a public research organization and is the main producer of Official Statistics in Italy. It was created in 1926 under the name of “Central Institute of Statistics”. The idea was to have a single and independent body to produce social and economic data useful for citizens, policy makers and in general for the whole Country. With more than 2000 employees, one main office in Rome and 18 regional offices, Istat produces constantly high quality data about social and economic phenomena. Istat is also the main organization inside the National Statistical System, a national network that connects together Public Administrations, local and regional bodies, Chambers of Commerce and other local organization’s statistical departments. Istat is also one of the members of the European Statistical Network, an international Community lead by Eurostat that works not only to provide comparable statistics at the European level but also promoting common projects for data harmonization, data sharing and statistical data transmission.

What we do

Statistics means “science of the state”. By means of statistics, governments all over the world measure economic and social development as well as citizens wellbeing: living conditions, health, work, education, environment, social relationships. All official statistics are produced using administrative archives, sample surveys and censuses. Census is the most important and complex survey carried out by Istat. The last population and housing census was carried out in October 2011 involving more than 24 millions households and more than 14 million buildings.

Role in proDataMarket project

Istat not only produces statistics to support the government or local administrations for decision making processes, but also to provide high quality data for universities, researchers, professionals, journalists, businesses. The awareness about the value of data and about the opportunities that data can offer to citizens and in general to the market is the main reason for Istat to join and to support the proDataMarket project. In this project, the Istat role is not only as a data provider, but also to support the project for data quality production as well as for methodological aspects when data are used in the expected business cases. More precisely, Istat will support business cases related to real estate market. The goal is to make data more accurate and suitable to generate new services or to improve existing services built on data, making in the same time this market more transparent and useful for citizens and businesses.